A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the wit and all the fashion of London. Men of letters and statesmen, men of the robe and men of the sword, lawyers, dandies, poets, and philosophers, met there to discuss politics, literature, scandal, and the play. There were often very strange figures among the motley crowd behind the red-curtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The gentleman who made himself so agreeable to the bar-maid or who chatted so affably about the conduct of the allies or the latest news from Sweden, might meet you again later on if your road lay at all outside town, and imperiously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the varied assembly the strangest figures must have been the beaux and exquisites, in all their various degrees of "dappers," "fops," "smart fellows," "pretty fellows," and "very pretty fellows." They made a brave show in many-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with orange-flower water, civet-violet, or musk, with large falbala periwigs, or long, powdered duvilliers, with snuff-boxes and perspective glasses perpetually in their hands, and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiously clouded and amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist or the coat-button. The staff was as essential to an early Georgian gentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the cane-carrying custom incurred the frequent attacks of the satirists. Cane-bearers are made to declare {77} that the knocking of the cane upon the shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it in the mouth, were such reliefs to them in conversation that they did not know how to be good company without it. Some of these young men appear to have affected effeminacy, like an Agathon or a Henri Trois. Steele has put it on record that he heard some, who set up to be pretty fellows, calling to one another at White's or the St. James's by the names of "Betty," "Nelly," and so forth.

Servants play almost as important parts as their masters in the humors of the time. Rich people were always surrounded by a throng of servants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know a little of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in country sports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant out of Terence or Molière. Last came the negro slave, who waited on my lord or my lady, with the silver collar of servitude about his neck.

Servants wore fine clothes and aped fine manners. The footmen of the Lords and Commons held mimic parliament while waiting for their masters at Westminster, parodying with elaborate care the proceedings of both Houses. They imitated their masters in other ways, too, taking their titles after the fashion made famous by Gil Blas and his fellow valets, and familiar by the farce of "High Life Below Stairs." The writer of the Patriot of Thursday, August 19, 1714, satirizes misplaced ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan." Presently after another assured the company of the illness of my lord bishop. "The information had doubtless continued had {78} not a fellow in a blue livery alarmed the rest with the news that Sir Edward and the marquis were at fisticuffs about a game at chuck, and that the brigadier had challenged the major-general to a bout at cudgels."

[Sidenote: 1714—Principal towns]

It is only fair, after enumerating so many of the eccentricities and discomforts of early Georgian London, to mention one proof of civilization of which Londoners were able to boast. London had a penny-post, of which it was not unreasonably proud. This penny-post is thus described in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey of London." "For a further convenience to the inhabitants of this city and parts adjacent, for about ten miles compass, another post, and that a foot-post, commonly called the penny-post, was erected, and though at first set up by a private hand, yet, bring of such considerable amount, is since taken into the post-office and made a branch of it. And in this all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound weight, and also any sum of money not above 10 pounds or parcel of 10 pounds value is safely conveyed, and at the charge of a penny, to all parts of the city and suburbs, and but a penny more at the delivery to most towns within ten miles of London, and to some towns at a farther distance. And for the better management of this office there are in London and Westminster six general post-offices . . . at all which there constantly attend . . . officers to receive letters and parcels from the several places appointed to take them in, there being a place or receiving house for the receipt thereof in most streets, with a table hung at the door or shop-window, in which is printed in great letters 'Penny-post Letters and Parcels are taken in Here.' And at those houses they have letter-carriers to call every hour. . . . All the day long they are employed, some in going their walks to bring in, and others to carry out."

The next town in population to London was Bristol, and Bristol had then only one-seventeenth of London's population. The growth of the manufacturing industry, which has created such a cluster of great towns in the North of England, had hardly begun to show itself when {79} George the First came to the throne. Bristol was not only the most populous place after London at this time, but it was the great English seaport. It had held this rank for centuries. Even at the time when "Tom Jones" was written, many years after the accession of George the First, the Bristol Alderman filled the same place in popular imagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of London. Fielding attributes to the Bristol Alderman that fine appreciation of the qualities of turtle soup with which more modern humorists have endowed his metropolitan fellow.

Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian days. It was only made into a separate parish a few years before George came to the throne, and its first dock was opened in 1709. Manchester was comparatively obscure and unimportant, and had not yet made its first export of cotton goods. At this time Norwich, famous for its worsted and woollen works and its fuller's earth, surpassed it in business importance. By the middle of the century the population of Bristol is said to have exceeded ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more than fifty-six thousand; Manchester, about forty-five thousand; Newcastle, forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thirty thousand; while Liverpool had swelled to about thirty thousand, and ranked as the third port in the country. York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exeter, the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of some account in the region towards the Welsh frontier. Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, and Canterbury were places of note. Bath had not come into its fashion and its fame as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few years before George entered England. The strength of England now, if we leave London out of consideration, lies in the north, and goes no farther southward than a line which would include Birmingham. In the early days of the Georges this was just the part of England which was of least importance, whether as regards manufacturing energy or political power.

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Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude something like that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; a succession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time just before the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highly prosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters, and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre in the royal diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming from political proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of the time could think of no remedy but new proscription and fresh persecution. Roman Catholics were excluded from the legislature, from municipal corporations, and from the liberal professions; they were not allowed to teach or be taught by Catholics; they were not permitted to keep arms; the trade and navigation of Ireland were put under ruinous restrictions and disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had been passed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the Crown "to prevent the further growth of Popery." Some of these later measures introduced not a few of the very harshest conditions of the penal code against Catholics. The Irish Parliament at that time was merely in fact what has since been called the British garrison; it consisted of the conquerors and the settlers. The Irish people had no more to do with it, except in the way of suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgia thirty years ago had to do with the Congress at Washington.

[Sidenote: 1714—Old Dublin]